Interviews

Universe at War Interview

We get the lowdown on Universe at War's inception and vision from Petroglyph Creative Director Adam Isgreen

One of the bigger surprises in Sega's game portfolio is that the console-centric publisher is bringing Petroglyph's Universe at War to shelves this fall. UaW already has a bit of pedigree, in that the team behind it created Star Wars: Empire at War and helped shape both Dune II and the Command & Conquer franchise. So consider us pleasantly surprised that when we saw the game in action, it appeared to hit the RTS high-notes that Petroglyph is known for. We chatted with Creative Director Adam Isgreen about how UaW was pitched to Sega, what lessons were taken from previous games, and about how frail and puny humans are in general.

Will Smith says, "Welcome to Earth!"

GameSpy: Can you give us a top-level overview of UaW and its setting? What was your basic pitch to Sega?

Adam Isgreen:UaW is a real-time tactical / strategy game set here on Earth in the year 2012. Humans find out they're not alone in the universe, and that's not really good news for them. Earth becomes the catalyst for a massive war brewing across the entire galaxy, and the humans are caught in the middle.

Originally, the game pitch was simply "massive alien war machines invade Earth!" We always wanted to set the game on the planet and keep it relatable in that regard. As we developed both the game concept and the giant alien war machines further, more and more issues came up, which of course led to the game's design changing several times. Namely, we just couldn't come to terms with humans fighting back against an advanced space-faring civilization with any hope of success, which pushed our game in a different direction than most RTS games go when on Earth and set against aliens. Namely, the humans don't win and aren't much more than fodder (and resource) for these warring factions. Maybe we survive, but that's about the biggest victory we can expect at this point!

Humans are just cannon fodder to weird aliens like these guys

GameSpy: With Petroglyph's roots in the C&C franchise, one assumes that the gameplay will be pretty fast and tactical. Yet for Star Wars: Empire at War, you added a more strategic layer with the galaxy map that you muck around in before getting into the actual skirmish. Will UaW utilize a similar strategy/tactic split, or is there a different gameplay system?

Isgreen: We have a similar setup in UaW, where there is a global strategic layer that sits overtop the tactical maps that you battle for control of across most of Earth's continents. The strategic layer allows you to gather information, position your forces and heroes, and figure out the best course of attack against your enemies. It's about a 70/30 division of gameplay time between tactical combat and strategic planning. We've streamlined a lot of the strategic play so that while there are less things to worry about, each of them has deeper significance for both strategic mode and in tactical gameplay.

Pacing-wise, the game plays fluidly, but not as fast as some recent RTS games have been. We wanted to give the player a chance to recover from bad tactical choices without being horribly punished (i.e. wiped out), so our gameplay speed will be somewhere in the middle once everything settles out.

GameSpy: Similarly, were there any specific lessons the team took away from doing SW: EaW and its Forces of Corruption expansion pack?

Isgreen: Oh yes, a lot of things. First off was that players really wanted to follow a story when you're telling one, so our story campaign this time around is more of a linear experience rather than having a lot of open-ended segments with story sprinkled into it like we did in the Empire at War series. Additionally, we learned that too many fleets can be a bad thing when it came to managing them all, which is why our persistent forces in our strategic mode are centered around the heroes and their strike forces. This allowed us to make the heroes behave differently at the strategic level, and still give the player enough depth and combat possibilities without as many individual fleets. As a final example, we learned that people love big, customizable units, as there were many requests for capital ships that could be customized for EaW. The end result of this final lesson is an entire faction for UaW: The Hierarchy.